The drive is LUKS encrypted. It is an option when formatting the drive using Gnome Disks in Linux.
Whenever you plug it in, it asks for the password.
On the drive I have a bash script that syncs my home directory to a folder on the drive using rsync.
I don’t create new files personal files very often and they are backed up in other ways too (to a NAS and also encrypted and uploaded to cloud storage) so I tend to only run the sync script about every other week or so.
I have a separate script and folder to backup my work laptop as well. for the work laptop I back my home directory and the /etc directory, because I have some customized configurations in etc. I run this every week.
Because the drives are USB C I can plug them into my phone for transferring files. The encrypted drive can be mounted using an app called ZUGate.